Marketing Weblog: STAR WARS UNLEASHES THE FORCE OF THE VIDEOGAMES

Lucas Arts recently announced that they will make a worldwide launch of its new videogame, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, on September 16.

The Force Unleashed is the first next-generation game developed internally at Lucas Arts, and will be available on the Xbox , Playstation 3, Playstation Portable and Nintendo Wii.

The videogame casts players as Darth Vader's "Secret Apprentice" and promises to unveil new revelations about the Star Wars galaxy. The expansive story, created under direction from George Lucas, is set during the largely unexplored era between Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope. In it, players will assist the iconic villain in his quest to rid the universe of Jedi - and face decisions that could change the course of their destin

From a Marketing point of view, this initiative is extremely interesting, for what could have become they 7th film of the Saga, has turned into a new videogame. Why have they done so?

As I explained in “The Kingdom of Shrek” (cfr International Marketing for more details), where the studios are really getting money is not from the box office of the movie but from Licensing. The movie in itself is actually an excuse for launching or relaunching a License. So the question would therefore be: Till what extent do you need to develop an expensive movie to relaunch the license or can get the job done with something else? At Lucas Arts they have thought they can get it done through an innovative videogame, that includes a story-telling within it.

Let me follow with some figures from the Industry. According to Price Waterhouse Coopers:

• The Videogame Industry is expected to reach a market size of 46,5 billion US$ in 2010 with a 11,4% compound annual growth.

• The Filmed Enterntainment Industry to go up to 104 billion US$ in 2010 with a compound annua growth of 5,3%.

Moreover, if you compare the Videogame Industry vs the Film one you will conclude that the former:

• Has less fragmentation (great products can get a significant market share).

• Has less intermediaries (you can work without media moguls such as Warner or Paramount).

• Requires a significant less investment in product development (no need for instance to pay 25 million US$ to get on board a well-known actor).

• Has a much faster time to market (the development of a videogame has nothing to do with the one of a film).

So if you are able to come up with an outstanding videogame + combine it with good Licensing Business around it, the return on investment is going to be really good while taking a limited amount of risk. Add to to this an awaited story within the videogame, and you are sure to have a big hit in your hands.

So far, a release of the trailer has been done on July 8th. Tons of Star Wars fans (who are also intensive videogames players to a big extent), are already queueing for the game.

In the meantime, I presume that Lucas Arts is currently moving many agreements on Licensing. Be sure to that you will get a Star Wars goodie with your Big Mac!

Comments

Box offices are going down and licensing definitively is one of the main engines that will power the theatrical industry in the current DVD / BR scenario.

But don't discard future film developments! my belief is that videogames are also becoming a new testing field for movie studios, e.g.
http://www.ghostbustersgame.com/
Property of Columbia, a.k.a. Sony Pictures, part of the Sony corporation and owners of the PlayStation business. Let's see how the game performs and then what happens next!

Saludos,
Jesús.

@Jesús: For what I've seen till now, movies derived from games are basicly, well, not really worth seeing.

It might be the director doing all this tho ... if you check out: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0093051/ (Uwe Boll, director of many game-related movies) you will see most of his movies have a bad rating.

So, a game-to-movie project could end up with a good movie... as long as Uwe ain't involved? :D

-Greetz

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